


in the moment we're lost and found

by stranded_star



Series: The Tattoo AU [4]
Category: Holy Trinity (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, F/F, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stranded_star/pseuds/stranded_star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She breathes. In, and out, and in, until Hannah forgets what she was ever searching for, because this, this feels like the answer, like the art written into her soul since she could conceive of herself." ~or, Hannah paints the world on Grace's back~</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the moment we're lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading - more can be found on my tumblr, wordharvest.tumblr.com.

***   
Hannah is an artist. 

She’s known this since she first felt paint stain the soft palms of her hands, bold and bright and real; she’s known this since she first felt grief turn her veins to ice and made color run from her fingers into flowers and moons and broken feathers. She is an artist in the margins of day and night, making paintings of her soft muttered nonsense into the ear of the girl she loves. 

Art is survival: art is the way words take shape like pearls on the crest of her lips, art is feeling the pulse of her blood run into immortality on someone else’s skin. She thinks, as she leans against the window of Grace’s home, that art is the way she can give so much to another, and, for all its elusiveness, she clings to that gift fiercely. 

So she asks Grace in the fading moments of day for a gift, because sometimes she forgets to ask, for the love she wants to take, and permission for the love she wants to give. 

“Can I paint you?” She whispers, and her words tremble suspended in the empty air. Vulnerability is everywhere in the dusk, the day splitting to reveal her quiet, dark secrets. 

Grace turns over, peers at her. Her eyes are deep and relaxed, brown glowing with the flicker of the tiny fairie lights decorating the rooms. Hair wild and rumpled, her curls make delicate frames around her cheekbones. Hannah likes this Grace best, sleepy with almost dreams, her white tank top thin enough to reveal the careful precision of her breasts and ribs. Her skin is an endless adventure of learning, and perhaps. Perhaps paint will elucidate it. 

The moment hangs between them, counted in Grace’s blinks. 

“Of course?” She murmurs, her eyebrows creased together. She leans closer, presses hot lips to Hannah’s mouth, sweet with the remnants of the day. “I would love that. You know.” 

Hannah does know, but she likes to ask for these things, because in some way the asking brings up a new moment of intimacy, a dual understanding of new places to explore. 

“I do.” She doesn’t explain, pushes her fingers through Grace’s wild mane, pressing her back into the rivulets of silky sheets. Her mouth finds hers, and it feels like coming home. 

Home, a place Hannah hasn’t quite understood until these stolen moments. 

Forever. She whispers into the welcome pull of Grace’s mouth. And Grace replies, in the tightening of her hands on the firm curve of Hannah’s waist. Please don’t go. 

They make symphonies, in the edges of the blankets, firm thighs and warm tongues and open necks forming the instruments of some greater ecstasy. Hannah’s chest fills, warm and slow and unencumbered, until she too feels like the sun. 

Morning, and the art will come. 

***   
She wakes up slowly, which is by far the best way to wake up. 

Her sleep had been tainted - or perhaps enlivened – by the anticipation of the smooth expanse of Grace’s back and the way she could resurrect beauty onto an already beautiful canvas. Grace always sleeps in, giving Hannah long, solitary hours in the morning, so Hannah rolls out from under the sheets and tiptoes to the living room. 

She gets her paints assembled first, pouring water into her mouth and then into stained mason jars, placing them in an arc near the couch. She lines up her brushes, running the tips of her fingers over their stiff tips, smoothing. She wants something of perfection in the set up, so she can take the most delight in the act. 

The tea water boils: she can feel the stirrings of the shrill shriek, and darts up to shut it off. Pouring hot water over green tea and watching the tea leaves bloom to life is her favorite miracle, and she blows gently, feeling the steam curl around her lips. Grace likes coffee in the mornings, so she makes it precisely, heavy with cream and sugar. The sun is streaming in, leaving patterns of light against the cream colored Brooklyn walls, and she bathes in it, her body warm and sleepy from post-sex delirium. 

Her tongue runs ragged over the edges of her teeth, and she thinks of animals in the mountains, fur matted in snow and paws dirty with the earth. Sometimes Hannah feels like an animal, like her skin is hiding some fierce, lonely wolf, like she’s battling an imaginary war in the topography of the city. 

But Grace takes the animal out of her, or perhaps tames it, or perhaps makes it love, because love tempers the wild in someone: Grace has claimed her as her own, and Hannah feels a comfort in the claiming, the limits on the boundlessness of her soul. She feels safe – the embrace warm, containing, but never stifling. 

Perhaps she can explain this with the colors she sees behind her eyelids when she sleeps, put galaxies into Grace because the stars are the closest she will ever get to truth. 

“Hey, baby.” The sleepy syllables drop heavy off of Grace’s tongue, from behind. “Been up long?” 

Hannah turns, reaches out. Grace falls into her, and it astounds her, absolutely floors her, that she gets to wrap her into her arms and feel her warm skin against her own. She remembers the first time her lips felt the soft press of Grace’s mouth, and she can’t stop the float of her heart, up into the sky like the world is limitless. 

“Not long.” She sighs into her sweet-smelling curls, breathes low and long. “I made you coffee.” 

“Thanks.” Grace smiles at her, simple and quick. She’s wearing sweatpants and that same tank top as the night before. The glow on her face spreads as she sips the creamy drink and settles back against the counter, until her smile fills up Hannah’s whole line of vision. 

“Gosh, you’re pretty right now.” 

Grace sticks out her tongue, giggles. “You’re just saying that cuz you got laid last night.” She tilts her head back, closes her eyes. “I’m sleepy still, Hannah. Thank god it’s Sunday.” 

“I know, me too.” She’s lying, because she’s not tired one bit, but sometimes it’s nice to share in such a simple revelation, the realization of exhaustion when you have the space to be slow and lazy. 

“Still want to do your painting?” The pink expanse of Grace’s mouth opens in a kitten yawn, and she is so painfully beautiful that Hannah thinks her heart will explode, trying to put color to her canvas. 

“Yes.” You’re everything, I think. “Yes, I’d like that.” 

Grace slips over to the living room, casual and easy. Hannah likes seeing her in these moments, when the crowds of New York aren’t causing undo anxiety or stress, reflected in the creases of her frown. She sets her coffee down before tugging off her shirt, and god, Hannah will never get used to the spread of her back before her, arched and smooth and perfect for touching. She can just see the curve of her breasts beyond her ribcage, and she’s almost distracted by the eternally renewing mystery of Grace’s body. But. 

She’d like to do this first, at least. 

Grace’s body is pressed along the spread of blankets, her arms crossed underneath her head. Hannah straddles her hips carefully, running one gentle hand down the rocky curve of her spine. Precise and loving – she tries to imbue all the light that Grace gives to her into her touches, because otherwise she doesn’t feel like enough. 

She bends over, lips near Grace’s ear. “Do you mind, what I make?” 

A shudder ripples through Grace’s shoulders. “No. Please, do what you want.” 

Hannah settles light on her hips, avoiding the distraction of the firm curve of Grace’s ass, because there are times for that later, when she can worship the refined details of Grace’s inner thighs and collarbones and lower stomach. She pushes the mess of curls from Grace’s shoulder blades, leaning down to kiss the in between space. 

She’ll start with the darkest blue she can imagine – cerulean with black, with dashes of violet. The dark feels like the entrance of the light, in some way, so she mixes and paints long slow strokes over her skin, shifting between smears of black violet and purer blue. She fades it out to a lighter sky, periwinkle into orange and magenta, red streaking the center of Grace’s spine. 

There’s magic to this blend of colors, because more pink and it is the sunrise; more red, the descent of night. 

She feels light, today, so she takes baby chick yellow and pale pink to stain the bottom of the sky the color of spring. Settling beneath the sunrise is the long spread of the ocean, a deep green blue that feels like a compilation of all the tears Hannah shed, before meeting the girl underneath her. 

She puts a teeny smear of a boat resting on the waves, and splashes yellow to create the ripples of sea foam, pinkened by the glow of the sun. The stars emerge with her tiniest brush, flecks of white and gold and pearl against the depth – she thinks that maybe this is the closest she’ll get to understanding the depth of her love, her love for the world and Grace and herself, most of all. 

Blowing gently, she lets the painting dry. She scrawls lazily in black across the bottom: lost and found. Because she likes existing in that interim, the space between not knowing and knowing. 

Spacious. That’s the word. Grace makes her feel like she has all the space in the world, even in the smallness of the one they’ve created. 

She leans down, careful not to smear the paint. “I’m finished, but. I think I’d like to do it again, if you’ll let me?” 

Grace turns her head slightly, and the affection in her eyes blows Hannah away even now – this thought that someone could reciprocate the fathomless love in her heart. “Always, Hannah.” 

Hannah runs her hands down her sides, grips her hips; she takes kisses from Grace’s soft mouth, slow, because even if she is an animal, she is a gentle one. Especially when her hips frame Grace sweetly and she can feel the flex of her muscles under the sensitivity of her inner thighs – when she feels so piercingly human that her ribs expand to consume all the extra oxygen in the room. 

“Let’s wash it off.” She whispers, her words still loud in their cocoon. “I’ll make thousands more – we don’t have to worry, about having this one be perfect.” 

“Yes – I like that.” 

And when Grace follows her into the bathroom, her sweatpants slipped off and her hand threaded sweetly through hers, Hannah thinks that she has never felt more settled in love, in the realization that she doesn’t have to work to make each moment perfect. 

Because she has endless moments, in the horizon of their life together, and she wants to taste each one, catch it in her mouth and roll it around her tongue before letting it go. Release. 

The space between getting lost and being found. 

So they sink together, into the hot bath with Hannah’s lavender bath salts and the low burn of Grace’s candles. Hannah nestles between the catch of Grace’s thighs and runs her hands over their close skin; Grace presses her lips against the shallow curve of her neck and whispers nonsense that makes Hannah’s heart sing. She breathes.

In, and out, and in, until Hannah forgets what she was ever searching for, because this, this feels like the answer, like the art written into her soul since she could conceive of herself. 

Less survival, and more living – no longer restless. 

She breathes, and she is home. 

***   
fin


End file.
